Adam Liptak provides a lucid explanation of President Bush's decision to nominate Michael Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General:

[I]n his two days of testimony this week, it became clear that Mr. Mukasey believes presidential power to be robust, expansive and sometimes beyond the power of Congress to control. That is perfectly aligned with the Bush administration’s views, and if Mr. Mukasey was initially a refreshing presence to the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was only because he justified in plain terms what other administration lawyers have said in secret memorandums often cloaked in obfuscation. ...

He indicated, for instance, that he favored a narrow reading of the Supreme Court’s sweeping 2006 decision, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, striking down the administration’s initial plan for military commissions to try prisoners at Guantánamo.

Is Mukasey just a smarter version of Gonzales--better able to defend the administration's indefensible positions? Liptak explains why Mukasey's reading of precedent to authorize expansive executive power in defiance of legislation is strained, at best.